Ben Winters - World of Trouble

The rest of them got much worse, of course. This was Astronaut’s real plan B. Food and water were limited, everything was limited, and he wasn’t going to share any of it, not for a second.

So here comes Jean up the rickety stairs with Astronaut’s sawtooth buck knife, shoved out of the hatch and told the price of her future. Surfing darkly, wild chemical horrors churning in her gut along with the terror. Looking for Nico.

“You know what?” She looks up at me with hope in her eyes, a small spark of joy. “You know what I remember? I remember thinking she’s probably gone. Because she told me she was going to leave, on the stairs she told me. And then with the party, and the speech, I mean, we’d been down there for—I don’t know, half an hour? He sat us down, he gave the speech, it had been time. If she was leaving she’d be gone already. I remember thinking that.”

I’ve thought of it too. It’s in the timeline I’ve got, up in my head.

“But there she was. She was still there,” says Jean. “Why was she still there?”

“Candy,” I say.

“What?”

“It was going to be a hard trip. She took what food she could find.”

She took the time to empty that machine, to prop it with the fork and run a coat hanger or her skinny arms up there and empty it out, she took that time and it cost her her life.

“So you fought her.”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember fighting her? And her fighting you?”

Her hand flies up to her face, her scratches and bruises, and then down again.

“No.”

“You don’t remember the woods?”

She trembles. “No.”

I lean over her, the gun and the knife in my two hands. “What do you remember, Jean?”

She remembers afterward, she says. She remembers running back to the garage, and finding that it was sealed. And understanding, even in her dark and addled desperation, understanding what it meant. The whole thing had been a joke, he had known all along she wouldn’t make it down there. Because Atlee Miller had already come and sealed up the hole, as Astronaut knew that he would.

And then there was just the sink. Just the sink and the knife and knowing what she had done and that she had done it for nothing—for nothing —and then cutting herself open like she had cut Nico open. Pressing the knife in as far as she could stand it, until the blood was pouring out of her and she was shrieking, and running, running from the blood, running out into the woods.

That’s the story. That’s the whole story, she says, and she’s trembling on the ground, her face is streaked with grief, but I’m pacing back and forth above her, that’s the whole story, she says, but there must be more, I have to have more . There are pieces missing. There has to be a reason, for example, that a slitting of the throat presented itself as the logical method—was that directed by Astronaut or was that an improvisation, the most effective means in the moment? And surely she was directed to bring back something. If she was supposedly earning her place in the bunker by killing Nico, there must have been a token to prove it.

I throw myself down in the mud and drop the weapons and grab her shoulders.

“I have more questions,” I tell Jean. Snarling; shouting.

“No,” she says. “Please.”

“Yes.”

Because I can’t solve the crime unless I know everything and the world can’t end with the crime unsolved, that’s all there is to it, so I tighten my grip on her shoulders and demand that she remember.

“We need to go back to the woods, Jean. Back to the part in the woods.”

“No,” she says. “Please—”

“Yes, Jean. Ms. Wong. You find her outside the building. Is she surprised to see you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t remember.”

“Please try to remember. Is she surprised?”

She nods. “Yes. Please, stop.”

“Do you have the knife out at this point—”

“I don’t remember.”

“You chase her—”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess. Did you chase her through the woods? Over that creek?”

“Please… please stop.”

Jean’s terrified eyes meet mine and it’s working, I can see her seeing it again, being there, I’m doing it, I’m going to get the information I need, she’s back there now at the scene with the knife handle wrapped in her palm, Nico’s struggling weight beneath her. And where was I, I was on the way but I wasn’t here yet, it took me too long, I should have been here to save her but I wasn’t and it’s burning, my blood is burning. I need more, I need all of it.

“Did she beg you for her life?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did she, Jean?”

She can’t speak. She nods, nods weeping, thrashes in my grip.

“Was she screaming?”

Nodding and nodding, helpless.

“She begged you to stop? But you didn’t stop?”

“Please—”

“There are more things I need to know.”

“No,” she says, “no, you don’t—right? You don’t, right? You don’t really, right?”

Her voice is altered, high and pleading, like a little kid, like a toddler, pleading to be told that something unpleasant isn’t really so. I don’t really have to go to the doctor, right? I don’t really have to take a bath . Jean and I hold our pose for a minute, down in the mud, me clutching her shoulders tightly, and I feel it, suddenly, where we’ve gotten to, here, what’s happening. What the asteroid did to her is done, and what Astronaut did to her is done, and now here I am, her last and worst terror, forcing her to stare into this blackness, wade through it like every detail matters, like it can possibly matter.

I let her go and she rolls her head back away from me, emitting low terrified moans like an animal on the slaughterhouse floor.

“Jean,” I say. “Jean. Jean. Jean.”

I say her name until she stops moaning. I say it softly, softer and softer, until it becomes a whisper, “Jean, Jean, Jean,” a soothing small little whisper, just the word, “Jean.”

I am sunk now into the ground beside her.

“When did your parents give you that bracelet?”

“The—what?”

Her right hand moves to the left wrist and she brushes her fingers over the cheap piece of jewelry.

“You told me when we first talked that it was your parents who gave you the charm bracelet. Was it on your birthday?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “It was my first communion.”

“Is that right?” I smile. I lean backward, balance myself with my fingers laced across my knees. “So you’re how old for that?”

“Seven,” she says. “I was seven. They were so proud of me.”

“Oh, boy, I’ll bet they were.”

We sit there for a while in the mud of the lawn and she gives it all to me, painting the picture: the soaring nave of St. Mary’s in Lansing, Michigan, the dancing lights of the votive candles, the warm harmonies of the choir. She remembers quite a lot of it, considering how young she was, how much has happened to her since. After a while I tell her a couple of my own stories, from when I was a kid: my parents taking us up to the old Dairy Queen on Saturday evenings for shakes; going to the 7-Eleven after school to buy Batman comics; biking with Nico all around White Park, when she first learned to ride and never wanted to get off the darn thing, around and around and around and around.

There’s a memory I love. It’s me and Naomi Eddes, it’s six months ago, give or take. The last Tuesday in March.